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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29012502">Misconstrued Sample</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixel_Runner/pseuds/Pixie%20Unger'>Pixie Unger (Pixel_Runner)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Mistaken - Pixie Unger</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Sample for the next orc boyfriend book</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 12:48:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,022</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29012502</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixel_Runner/pseuds/Pixie%20Unger</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“You cannot live on the food we have for you. That leaves me three choices. Let you continue to starve, slowly dying. Or put you out of your misery, and save the resources of feeding you for someone who has a chance to live.” The orc gave me a long, calculating look before he continued, “Or I can find you someone who is willing to spend his personal resources to care for a defective human.”</p><p>My name is Mina  I am one of the few people who survived when aliens arrived. </p><p>It wasn’t the invasion that made society fall, people panicked.  The food supply chains broke down.  We started fighting each other for the last loaf of bread.  That was before I ever saw one of the orc-shaped aliens.  </p><p>I managed to hide for more than a year before they found me.   I ended up living in a tent city set up in a school yard that felt like a human zoo for months when one of the orcs pulled me out of the food line.  He and his friends fed me the first real meal I’d had in ages before sending me back to my tent.   The next thing I know, I’m getting special treatment.  Romeo, Tybalt, Mac and Iago deciding to keep me.  I don’t know what they’re up to, and it’s hard to trust monsters at the end of the world.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Misconstrued Sample</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>AO3 got me started on writing.  I want to share my work here.  So, have a sample of my next book.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>My name is Wilhemina Jensen.  </span>
  <strike>
    <span>As far as I know, I am the last living member of my family.</span>
    
  </strike>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I am one of the few people who survived when the aliens first made contact.  I was in my twenties and working as a caretaker for a community hall in a small city when they arrived.  Locally, we didn’t see them right away, but their effects on the world were felt everywhere almost immediately.  There were riots in the grocery stores that very first day.  The whole food-shipping arrangement that North America depends on was gone with in a few weeks.  Society broke down and it fell apart, hard.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Neighbours turned on each other.  People started going around armed. Families were being killed for their vegetable gardens.  The preppers were probably cackling in their own private bomb shelters; the rest of us just tried to get by.    We watched the news reports on TV before that went dark.  It led to a whole series of conspiracy theories on the internet.  The aliens looked like something out of a video game or a movie; they were that much bigger than us. Think seven-foot-tall basketball player, but add an addiction to illegal horse steroids, then tusks, and photoshop their skin to a selection of unnatural grey colours.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The media quickly dubbed them “space orcs,” which people quickly shortened to just orcs.  The name stuck, even thought was ridiculous.  A whole corner of the internet was devoted to explaining that it had to be fake, because life on another planet wouldn’t really be humanoid.  Another group was loudly complaining about the lack of tentacles.   Some people assured us that it was fine as long as you didn’t shoot first. Then there were the really out-there ideas suggesting the orcs were actually us from the future using time travel.  And then there were cults that claimed the orcs were a penance sent by god to stop whatever thing they personally found objectionable.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The government ran out long before we ran out of dead.  Eventually, it got really bad.  Bad enough that the mass graves weren’t the low point anymore.  Some sort of shadow government, The Resistance, started recruiting people to help rid us of the alien threat.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That winter, those of us shacked up in the old community center barely left the building.  We weren’t preppers, but we were at least starting with a fully-stocked kitchen.  We had enough skills between us to hunker down and survive.  When we finally emerged in the spring, most of the people were gone.   It was like a ghost town, with only the occasional orc patrol to watch out for. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Days were spent getting supplies.  Food mostly, but also clothes.  It was easier to keep your head down and focus on just staying alive.  Avoiding the orcs and the random gangs of feral humans, I focused on just getting through today.  Every day was “get through today.”   And at night, I would be too tired to let the nightmares bother me.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Or so I told myself.  In reality, we all ended up crying out in the night at some point.  We had all lost so much.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>One day at a time, concentrate on getting through today, worry about tomorrow if you got there.  Be safe, be smart, be invisible.  Take care of each other.  And don’t forget to feed the cat.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>By the time we emerged in the spring, the orcs had largely stopped looking for us.  I thought I was good at avoiding them; it turned out I was just lucky.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I’m not going to lie, I was scared shitless when a gang of aliens found me hiding in the woods near the river.  It turned out they treated me better than I could have ever expected, even better than if I had been found by humans instead.  It didn’t exactly make me happy, but I was resigned to my fate.  The orcs kept the surviving humans they caught in internment camps that I had been vaguely aware of, but mostly as a place to avoid.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In a way, it was a relief to be in a contained environment where food happened three times a day and there were guards to break up any fights.  The schoolyard where they were keeping us wasn’t a bad place to be, even if it really was human warehousing.  It was a pretty good cross section of humanity.  Not as many men as you would expect; they tended to get themselves killed when they fought back.  Some kids, not many seniors.  It was the tiny selection of people who didn’t die when the world fell apart.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>We were all living tents in the park behind the school, with families sharing.  No one had their own tent. I was sharing my tent with a couple of women:  Erika was about my age, and Barb was about the same age as my mom.   It was an odd arrangement.  Erika had taken me under her wing when I arrived, but Barb didn’t say much.  I’d been there for weeks and I still had no idea what she thought of all of this.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There were enough weird outhouse-style bathrooms for us to use.  We could all get clean water from the fountains, and crowd into the gym during storms. The food wasn’t bad, it was just bland and vaguely kibble-like.  Institutional, shall we say.  Casseroles of unknown origin.  I joked about soylent green in the early days.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After a while, I realized the menu had been set out so we were basically getting eight meals on rotation, with no differentiation between breakfast, lunch, or dinner.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Today at lunch was the brown-beige casserole.  It was the one that I couldn’t eat.  I mean, I could; it didn’t taste any better or worse than anything else they fed us.  I just had to remember that anytime I ate … whatever that was, I ended up with a really itchy rash and swollen hands and feet.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now, I’m no doctor, but I was betting that eating something you knew made parts of your body swell and itch didn’t seem like the best idea, in case it was your throat that decided to swell next time.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Damn.  I was really hungry today, too.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So was everyone else.  That made it easy to take my full tray and pass it along to Miriam.  She and her husband were both in the same camp, and, in the absence of birth control, they were expecting; she needed the extra calories.  It had been a long time since any of us were fat enough to even get pregnant.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I followed them to where they were sitting, and waited for her to finish her portion before passing her mine.  I hadn’t noticed that one of the aliens had followed me.  All three of us froze and looked up when he growled.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No take!” he growled, barely intelligible.  He was tall and grey, his tusks straight, and, aside from a scar through his right eyebrow, he was relatively unmarked.  The sides of his head were clipped short, like all of them, but so was the back of his head.  What was left of his hair was black and pulled back into a little bun.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s okay!” I explained.  “I can’t eat this one.  Miriam needs the food, so if I share it with her, it isn’t wasted.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He just shook his head. “You eat.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I can’t,” I tried again.  “I get a rash.  I get sick when I eat this.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hmmm.” That one was more of a grumble.  “Not take, trade.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Miriam and Nicoli still hadn’t moved.  I hesitated.  “They did,” I lied.  “When Miriam was sick, she gave me her food.  I’m holding up my end of the trade.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The guard narrowed his eyes, but nodded and left.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I thought that was the end of it.  Afternoon brought Tai Chi, like always, followed by a supper that was green and uneventful.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Two days later at breakfast, it was brown-beige sludge again.  It looked like the sort of thing your weird aunt would bring to a potluck that was probably made of mushroom soup, brown rice, and mayonnaise.  And despite how much it reminded me in smell, colour, and texture of cat food, I still would have eaten it if it didn’t make me want to claw my skin off.  I took my plate, but after the last time, no one was hungry enough to take it.  I waited for it to be time to turn in our trays and just brought it back, untouched.  One of the guards took it from me and frowned.  Then he called over his shoulder and someone bigger came over.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It could have been the same one, but as much as I hated to say it, they all looked the same to me.  I hadn’t exactly put the effort into learning individual features.  He had the same hair, but there wasn’t exactly a lot of variation there.  They had different symbols tattooed in red on their arms, but they weren’t human symbols, and I hadn’t been able to figure them out or find a pattern.  Still, this one was big enough that it felt like he could block out the sun.  He glared at me like I had personally offended him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I flinched, but managed to mumble, “I still can’t eat this.  I’m sorry, but really, I can’t.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He took the tray from the guy in the clean up line then came and stood too close behind me.  I shifted to get a bit more space.  He nodded and pointed at one of the doors into the school.  I wasn’t happy about being separated from the herd; people who were taken away didn’t always come back.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He gave me a gentle nudge and I thought about refusing for a moment, but I was horribly out-numbered and if I made a fuss, there was no way I was coming back.  If I went quietly, I might.  Not everyone who went inside disappeared, but enough of them to make us all nervous.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I was steered towards the school’s old cafeteria.  There was a meal line for them that had significantly better food than what we were getting.  He passed me my tray of beige, then helped himself to chicken, corn on the cob, lemon roast potatoes, and green salad.  Then he took my tray in his other hand and went over to sit at one of the tables.  He had a little chat with the others at the table, until someone nodded over his shoulder at where I was standing like a traffic island at the end of the food line.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He waved me over.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I came and sat, fidgeting with my hands in my lap. I really did not want to make eye contact.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He nudged me in the back near hard enough to nearly knock me off the bench.  When I looked up, the other orcs at the table were grinning at me, and my dinner date was eating my tray of beige goop.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I slowly looked up at him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He nudged his plate of chicken towards me.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The other orcs were eating with their knives.  I didn’t have one, so I had to use my fingers.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t, objectively, that good.  The chicken was a little over-cooked, but it was still the best thing I had eaten since before they arrived.  I just wanted to eat quickly before he changed his mind.  I also didn’t want to make myself sick, so I tried to find a balance between hurrying and bolting down my food.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He finished first.  I stopped, prepared for him to take his tray back, but instead he gestured for me to keep eating.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I wasn’t going to make him tell me twice.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After breakfast, he led me back out to the school yard and sent me on my way.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>My stomach was full for the first time in more than a year, so I went back to my tent and went back to sleep.  Food comas are nice, and it wasn’t as though I had anything else to do.</span>
</p>
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